The writer fell into a state of depression and paranoia after the release of his successful 2007 debut novel Heart-Shaped Box. Every new attempt at a book was a mess, but writing his IDW comic book series Locke & Key proved to be the best prescription for creativity.

"I was really unhappy and confused, but never about the comic," Hill, 41, says. "I could sit down and I could write the comic, and I felt like the person I wanted to be."

The prose writing came around and he's had hits with both 2010's Horns and this year's NOS4A2, yet he still finds a youthful glee in comics. The two-chapter end of his long-running series begins with Locke & Key: Alpha No. 1, out Wednesday. And in November he'll launch Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland, a horror comic that ties into NOS4A2.

While Locke & Key is a coming-of-age story filtered through a dark, shadowy lens, Wraith is as "if Pixar made 30 Days of Night for the kiddies," Hill says.

Gabriel Rodriguez, the Locke & Key artist who's been his creative partner since the series started in 2008, calls Hill the "ultimate comic-book writer," whose gift is giving voice and depth to characters who are both believable and lovable.

"He knows how to measure and develop their human condition even against the bizarre or fantastic situations they might be facing," Rodriguez says. "That gives his writing a constant realistic appeal, even while facing situations as unreal as digging through the solid thoughts of a kid's mind inside a head opened with a magic key."

"Locke & Key: Alpha" No. 1 is the first of two issues bringing the Locke children's tale to a close.(Photo: IDW)

Hollywood has taken note of his talent, just as it has done with Hill's father, the novelist Stephen King (Joe Hill is a pen name; he was born Joseph Hillstrom King).

A 2011 TV pilot adaptation of Locke & Key wasn't picked up by Fox, but Universal Pictures and producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are developing it as a possible movie trilogy. And the big-screen version of Horns had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, with Daniel Radcliffe starring as a young man who grows horns and has the ability to make people spill their darkest secrets.

With Locke & Key and Wraith finished, Hill is focusing on novels. Gunpowder has been on the back burner for too long, says the writer, and he's working on the first draft of The Fireman, a "scary" science-fiction story along the lines of Ray Bradbury or Richard Matheson.

Although the world at large knows him more for his novels, Hill still considers himself a comic-book writer first and foremost, and that's where he feels most at home.

"When I go to a comic-book convention, I'm completely Joe Hill and people want to talk to me about the comics. Things get a little cloudier sometimes if it's like a fantasy convention. There, I think people are a little more aware of my dad," he says.

"The larger comic-book community has way moved past the idea that I'm interesting because of who my dad is. They don't really care about that. They care about how Locke & Key is going to end."